2.
Stephen never did pay for gas.

In fact, he hadn’t been much help at all when it came to the matter of recruiting members, aside from asking them pointless questions upon meeting them; Like the maiden name of their father’s first dog, their preferred method of suicide, or their favorite number between one hundred and seventy six and two hundred and thirty three.

But after a few grueling weeks of Brian searching and Stephen being... Stephen, they’d managed to pull together some semblance of a band line-up;
A ragtag group of young men consisting of a guitar player with his head shoved up his ass, Scott Putesky, A last-resort bassist from theatre class, Brian Tutunick, and a keyboardist begrudgingly brought in to take Stephen’s promised place, Perry Pandrea.

After everyone had come together, it’d been a cakewalk,
It’d all gone so smoothly.
Or at least, as smoothly as it could go; What with a musical group consisting of guys that didn’t exactly get along, didn’t exactly like the same music, and didn’t exactly have anything in common.
They discussed visions and artistic thoughts, they found a general direction for the music, and Brian, sampling some of his more popular pieces from poetry night, began morphing spoken-word into lyrics.

Of course, all this was taking place after they’d already booked their first gig; playing some dingy rock n’ roll club where they’d somehow convinced the owner to actually pay them for their “services”.

And when Marilyn Manson and the Spooky Kids took stage for the first time

.....It was a complete train wreck.
Nothing short of a small disaster in Marilyn- or Brian’s opinion; after he had run off-stage at the end of the performance to empty the contents of his churning stomach.
However, the applause that managed to echo from the small crowd of twenty or so people all the way to the grimy bathroom was enough to drown out the sound of his bile sloshing ‘round the toilet bowl.
It was enough to shift his outlook.

The rush of a show and the thick stench of vomit and other fluids and the faint sound of applause and the burning of acid in his throat.
It felt good.
It felt bad and disgusting and great and euphoric and Brian was immediately hooked.
He wanted more.

From that first show, a new fire had been lit under the ass of Brian Hugh Warner.
The outcast had finally found his calling; the pessimist had finally found his purpose and he was ready to pursue his newly-discovered niche.
Brian was here to inspire. To insight.
To entertain and to severely piss off.

It took two whole shows for Brian to come to his “creative senses”, and suddenly, his brand new lineup had become brand new once more.
Perry Pandrea (Zsa Zsa Speck) and Brian Tutunick (Olivia Newton Bundy) were briskly dismissed and promptly replaced by an effeminate guitarist from a rival band, who’d been drawn to the dark side with the promise of better music and his own cool alias.
Thus, Brad Stewart was happily inducted into the band and rechristened Gidget Gein.

And Brian (The original), despite debatably better judgement, welcomed dear old Stephen into the band, still lacking keyboard.
He had no real purpose as a member for now.
Sentimental purposes, maybe.
Decorative purposes.
Something along those lines.
Stephen Bier was now in the band, and rebirthed as Madonna Wayne Gacy, a name which Stephen soon shortened to just "Pogo", Gacy’s clown name, claiming the original alias didn’t fit his personality and had too many syllables.



Speaking of too many syllables; Pogo, or rather Stephen, had been non-stop chattering in Brian's ear for ten solid minutes on the way to their destination; some grungy, metal club.

Even out of the car, Stephen’s mouth never stopped.
There was no point in getting frustrated, no point interrupting him. Brian had made both mistakes before.
So he simply tuned Stephen out, while simultaneously pretending to listen (a skill he’d nearly mastered by now), and thumbing through the thick stack of papers in his hands.

Stephen had his own stack, though he'd already nearly lost a couple from his pile, bouncing and twitching about erratically.

Brian had spent his hard-earned cash printing out those flyers, and already he could sense their fast-approaching ruin.
Each tiny insignificant wrinkle Stephen made in the paper reach Brian’s ears like nails on a chalkboard.

He sighed.

"Are you listening?" Stephen questioned accusingly as soon as he’d picked up on the exhale, rocking back and forth on the heels of his feet.
"Yeah." Brian replied flatly.

Like some sort of pause/play button, when Brian’s mouth closed Stephen’s opened; though luckily, Brian had been able to hit ‘pause’, interrupting the chatty man before he could continue.

"We should probably get these passed out." He insisted tiredly, having to remind his friend of why they stood outside the club in the first place; publicity.

"Right. Right." Stephen passively agreed, rerouting his hyperactive brain in an attempt to focus on the task at hand.

Brian rolled his eyes. He could almost hear the gears turning in Stephen’s head.


Despite slight annoyance, Brian’s mood was lighter than usual, for he was still pleased and fairly proud of the flyers in both their hands. He'd designed them all himself, "Marilyn Manson & The Spooky Kids" featured prominently on the bright orange pages, along with some disturbing, explicit, little doodles and designs and whatever other madness he’d decided was necessary.

He was sure at least half of them would end up on the floor or tossed at the overflowing garbage cans methodically placed around the club; But, then again, that was all the more incentive for he and Stephen to try and force their flyers into the hands of each and every person in the establishment.

Said establishment just so happened to be featuring the "talents" of Amboog-A-Lard that night.
A lucky coincidence in Brian's opinion as they, surprisingly, managed to draw quite a nice-sized crowd.
After seeing them at the mall he'd written them off, but to his shock (and perhaps brief envy), they were relatively popular in the South Florida scene.
They'd even won some local awards.

Brian wouldn’t call himself a fan of Amboog-A-Lard; their music just wasn’t up to par with his superior tastes.
However, having seen them preform by chance around four times now, it was getting a bit difficult not to tap his foot along to a couple of songs.
Like a horrible commercial jingle that gets stuck in your head, Amboog-A-Lard was growing on him.
Less like a fondness and more like a tumor.


"You coming?"
Stephen's voice questioned impatiently, interrupting Brian’s thoughts of strategy as if he hadn't been stalling the both of them for the past several minutes.
Brian only exhaled and nodded, raising his brows in an exasperated manner and gesturing for his friend to go in ahead.

Stephen obliged, leading the way into the appropriately dark and cramped building.

The audio was the first thing Brian noticed. The second was the stench of alcohol and sweaty bodies. Both were bad.
He recognized the song; Or at least, he thought he did, ears straining to make sense of notes between the crackling speakers and the buzz of the mild crowd. And yet surprisingly it still sounded better than it had at the mall.

"Ew. God. That lighting's awful." Stephen complained at his side, squinting toward the stage.

"Focus." Brian scolded like a parent, sighing loudly and grabbing a paper from his stack, forcing it into the hands of the first person who'd take it.

"Yeah, yeah. Fine." Stephen replied, shoving a few of the fliers at people. Brian resisted the urge to cringe as Stephen wrinkled the sheets.

After about five minutes had passed, Brian had already lost sight of Stephen while creeping through the crowd. He guessed Stephen was either dutifully doing his job or was trying to get wasted.

As long as Stephen was being quiet or was at least jabbering out of earshot, Brian didn't mind.
He could pass out enough papers for the both of them.
Those who wouldn't take the fliers directly, would find the sheets shoved into their clothing or balled up and thrown at them from a safe distance.

That method had worked pretty well.
By the time he'd nudged his way up to the stage, Brian had rid himself of about half of his stack.
He glanced around, looking for a new target to foist his flyers upon; However his eyes traveled up the stage, and instead, he found yet another metaphoric-tumor that'd been growing on him since he first saw this god-awful band.
Jeordie.

The bassist of Amboog-a-lard was staggering around his section of the stage, per usual, strumming at his instrument with a sort of accuracy that negated his lethargic movements.
Feeling the stare, it didn't take him long to gaze up into the audience and spot Brian at the front- and when their eyes met Jeordie flashed a wide grin.

Brian, having been noticed, offered a friendly smile and a wave of his hand in return, oblivious to the glare the singer of the band had sent toward him and his flyers.

Okay, so advertising his own band to the audience of another band was probably a dick move.
But...
Brian was a dick.

A dick that was preoccupied watching his acquaintance play. Though, unlike Stephen, Brian was capable of multitasking.
He'd shove a flyer into someone's unsolicited hands then crane his neck around to watch Jeordie and the rest of the band; over-analyzing each member and each instrument.
Research, if you will. Brian would study what other bands did on stage so he could do the complete opposite, so he could toss all the “standard” methods of performance out the window.

Brian worked his way from front to back, side to side, and to each corner of the tight crowd, handing flyers to people he'd missed and/or people who'd already discarded their's.
It was disheartening to see a good number of his papers already crumpled up or now-moist with alcohol on the club's floor, but maybe people would spot the name “Marilyn Manson & The Spooky Kids” on their way out and store it in the back of their brain for later.
Any advertisement was good advertisement at this point.

By the time Brian’s hands were completely empty, Amboog-A-Lard’s set was wrapping up, leaving Brian just a tad disappointed that he hadn’t been able to gawk more intently at the band.
Nonetheless, he observed the last five to ten minutes from the back of the venue, arms crossed, head nodding lazily to the beat.
And when the set was completely over, Brian still stuck around for a few minutes.

Not because he wanted to, of course. But because Stephen had never manifested back at his side-

 and Stephen was his ride home.

Begrudgingly, Brian began to weave his way back through the flurrying crowd, a good number of people shoving and jostling their way toward the exits after the band members had slipped off the stage.

Brian headed toward the bar, as he supposed that was the best place to start. Scanning along countertop and empty stools, he found several inebriated people, none of which were the person he was looking for.

Stephen was nowhere in sight.

However, in Brian’s sight, was a certain skinny bassist, lingering off to the side of the stage, slouched over a large bottle of alcohol like some kind of gremlin- which... Brian found interesting; Considering he, himself, wasn’t old enough to legally drink, and he hadn’t guessed Jeordie to be older than him.

After giving it only a second of thought, Brian had the creeping urge to startle the other man, for his own amusement.
He acted upon it.
It was exceedingly easy to creep up on Jeordie in such a busy place, his quiet footsteps and movements easily drowned out in the chatter of the club.
Closer and closer he slunk, until he stood only a foot or two behind Jeordie and- not wanting to make his true intentions known, Brian leaned in close, just to greet the other with a casual
“Hey,”

It worked.
It worked beautifully,
And Brian had to try his damndest not to laugh aloud when Jeordie startled; flinching, spilling some whiskey down his chin and whipping around defensively to face the taller individual.
Jeordie’s furrowed brows slowly relaxed as he gazed up to Brian, coughing once, and then grinning nonchalantly.
“Scared the shit out of me...” he breathed, gently hitting a fist to his own chest.

“Sorry.” Brian murmured simply, as if that wasn’t his goal all along, tucking some blond hair behind his ear.
Jeordie shook his head dismissively, and so Brian moved on, pointing a spindly finger to the alcohol bottle in Jeordie’s grasp.
“You’re twenty one?” He questioned, semi-smugly, for he believed he already knew the answer.

Jeordie, for a moment, seemed caught off-guard by the question, blinking at Brian dumbfounded.
And then his lips parted, and slowly stretched into a wide, shit-eating grin; The sort a child would wear when they’d been caught fisting the cookie jar.
Jeordie shook his head again, slowly sipping from the Jack Daniel’s, as if Brian might try and snatch it away once he answered.
“Eighteen.”

Brian just vaguely nodded, and Jeordie’s brow arched, silently asking a question of his own.
He extended the large bottle in his grasp to Brian- an offering- and Brian could only hope Jeordie didn’t have any diseases or illnesses transmittable by mouth, for he took the bottle without hesitation, and returned a mischievous grin.
“Twenty.” He replied to the tacit inquiry, taking a slug of the liquor.

Brian, unlike Jeordie, was less accustomed to the drink, much to his embarrassment, choking and coughing and grimacing as he swallowed. Jeordie chuckled, and when the bottle was passed back, greedily accepted.

“So where’d you get that?” Brian asked, trying to prompt attention away from himself as he took a moment to stomach the previous swig.
Jeordie, still with a carefree grin, swallowed what whiskey he’d already managed to spill into his mouth.
“One of the other guys,” he claimed, gesturing vaguely in some even more-vague direction.
Brian presumed “one of the other guys” was another member of Amboog-A-Lard. So he didn’t bother asking for clarification.
Instead, he tried to keep the conversation going... for whatever reason. Likely to buy time until he happened upon Stephen.

“You’re not worried about getting kicked out?” He questioned, a brow slightly raised, arms having been crossed over his chest since he’d handed the bottle back.
Jeordie, in reply, waved a hand dismissively.
“Nah, Show’s over...” He remarked, with a smirk, taking down another heady drink.

Brian laughed shortly, and took a step closer, so as to be heard a bit more clearly in the buzzing building.
“Yeah, it was a good show tonight.” He complimented casually;
A compliment to which Jeordie reciprocated with a bright grin.
“Hey, thanks!” He practically chirped, giving Brian a genial slap on the shoulder.
And then Jeordie tensed, perking up like a dog that’s just spotted a squirrel running by.
“Oh!” He mused, shoving a hand into the pocket of his shorts, rummaging around.
The sound of crinkling paper is audible, and then, produced (or rather thrust into Brian’s face), was one of the flyers he’d made.

A sheepish grin lined Brian’s lips, albeit it waned when the paper was held up for several seconds too long. In fact, Brian peeked around it to look at Jeordie curiously- and Jeordie blinked himself out of whatever daze he’d been caught in.
He finally lowered the sheet, pursing his lips and squinting dark brown eyes at the slightly taller man.
“Am I gonna have to... beat your ass? Handing out flyers for- for your band at, Uh... at my show?” He inquired, as if offended, though the playful nature of his question was clear.

Brian considered the ‘threat’, his lips quirking up into a sad excuse of a grin, and he shrugged in a noncommittal fashion.
“I could take you.” He retorted simply, regardless of how true that statement was.

Jeordie, taken aback by the reply, shook his head, stifling his recurring smile and attempting to look serious. It didn’t work very well.
“You... You don’t know what you’re getting yourself into, man..” Jeordie warned cautiously, yanking the already rolled-up sleeve of his t-shirt even higher with the hand that held his alcohol, so as to give Brian a good view as he flexed his tiny arm.

Brian smirked and breathed his amusement out in a short exhale, not daring to offer anything more, lest Jeordie think he was interested in their conversation and anything other than an asshole.
“Clearly..” Brian murmured, a brow raised.

Jeordie, taking notice, huffed, and straightened back up to nurse at his drink before attempting to speak again.
“So, uh- your flyers...” he prompted, prepared to ask a question, despite the information quite literally being balled up in the palm of his hand.

“When’s the sh-“
Jeordie began, just to cut himself off when a young man he didn’t recognize bumped into Brian clumsily. Without an apology, the brown-haired individual began to grapple at Brian’s arm, trying to dutifully usher him away from Amboog-A-Lard’s bassist.
The man seemed a bit inebriated.
Jeordie blinked cluelessly.

“No fraternizing with the competition!” Stephen scolded, gesturing messily to Jeordie, after having finally decided to materialize; Much to Brian’s clear annoyance.

“Where’ve you been?” Brian practically sneers, ignoring Stephen’s entrance and posing a more important question before the other man even has a chance to answer the first.
“Are you drunk? Can you drive?”

Jeordie, feeling awkward with the two friends reunited, offered a lazy wave to them both and turned to shuffle back toward the side of the stage, just as Stephen had started ranting about every good thing he’d ever done in a vehicle in the past, to prove that he was, in fact, capable of driving both himself and Brian home.

Brian didn’t seem to be paying attention to neither Stephen nor Jeordie.
But he did notice the wave and offered Jeordie an even-less energetic one in return as he grabbed ahold of Stephen’s shoulders and began to forcefully maneuver him to the exit as if guiding a blind person.


Though Brian felt a tad bad about their short conversation being cut even shorter, he had a hunch this wouldn’t be the last time he and Jeordie would coincidentally run into each other.
Or maybe it was a goal.